As proposed by Hegel, art is a link to the higher universal truth of spirit and, thus, it is certainly not limited to simply "aesthetic consciousness" but rather something "ontologically disclosive" about the human condition (Gadamer). Intermedia, with it's prime candidate for example being performance art, does this particularly well as it reaches out to a broad(est) audience. In the post-post-modernism, or psuedo-modernist art movement of endless cords of audience-participatory art (for example computer games, text-in shows, and the internet as a whole), which has led to a vapid brainless state, performance art has an amazing potential to break a fourth dimension by blaring into an audience's face. Performance art contains the pivotal example of the "game" - one of Gadamer's three concepts of art - where the audience enters the zone of art as a group of participatory members. It is true that much of performance art would not exist without an audience as it is entirely experiential and multifaceted (with the audience being a colossal facet) - however an argument can be held that performance art can reach Hegel's higher universal spirit through interaction(s) within its members alone. Much of the pieces performed by Viennese Actionists, such as Otto Muehl's Wehrertuchtigung (Military Training) were privately held (within communes) for the sake of psychological exploration of the self via performance art. Viennese Actionists' art was much about a revolution in personal life, as Wilhelm Reich offered - consisting of a social synthesis of Marx and Freud, as well as psychological theories such as scream therapy.
Nonetheless, most performance art pieces are for the audience's psychological exploration - for example "Art School Stole my Virginity". Technological interfaces resulting out of neo-Dadaism into performance art intermedia affects people in an entirely interrupting aesthetic experience and, as Hans Breder described in his September 2012 Artforum, this is entirely important in creating the essential nature of humanity - something romanticized as "immaterial." Whereas modern philosophy (physicalism) would disagree with such a point, it is true that performance art entirely seeks something seemingly immaterial - the "...dematerialization of content by entering into the microstrcture of sound and imagery....what in physics people speak of as ephemeral phenomena that cannot be reduced to mere things. The radically microcosmic experience creates an effect that is at once both abstract and real."- Gadamer. Whereas mediums of post-modernist art invite mental action, performance art in intermedia interactive systems like Lorna requires it's audience to act and engage.
Performance art brings to life what Gadamer calls "the symbol." This is not an expressive symbol or idea of feeling (Suzanne Langer) but, rather, the presence of what is being symbolized - all experiences are symbols yet have a particular affection not in the constrains of their physical nature, making it a self-presentation and self-recognition (and, in this way, every branch of reality is a self-presentation due to its interactive nature: life is performance art).
Lastly, performance art most obviously captures Gadamer's concept of "festival" (as mentioned in Gadamer's The Relevance of the Beautiful). In "festival," art produces a sense of unity with a communicative function. Whereas it can, and often is, argued that anything connected to a person is art (and, thus, contains this concept of "festival" because all experiential manifestations produce a unity with any observer), intermedia/performance art does this quite bluntly. Hans Breder's Nazi Loop shows this emotional unity of "festival" by connecting to a binding sense of horrific fascism, racism, and fear in display of superimposed Nazi territories on a map of the United States of America.
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